James Burch, acting Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice)
A top official in the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs defended alternatives to drug incarceration Thursday before a House panel — despite internal DOJ criticism that the office has poorly monitored its grants funding such programs.
James Burch II, acting Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance — an office within OJP — testified on the benefits provided by programs that offer alternatives to jail time before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“The Office of Justice Programs … has shifted its focus to more strategic, more effective and sustainable approaches to addressing crime that recognizes the critical role of evidence-based strategies and sentencing alternatives,” Burch said. “This means supporting programs that are backed by evidence of effectiveness, not simply ideology.”
Appealing to fiscal expedience in a time of tight budgets, Burch advocated programs that prevent and divert individuals from entering the criminal justice system. His big sell Thursday was the effectiveness of specialty courts such as “drug courts,” which exclusively address drug-related offenses.
“We must capitalize on the opportunities presented at the front end of the system,” he said. “Many adults and juveniles have been successfully diverted from further offending by programs that use the leverage and the monitoring power of the court.”
Burch said his office is conducting research to identify effective drug court practices and improve grants administered by the OJP.
According to the OJP, more than 50 percent of individuals released from prison will encounter legal trouble again within three years, with drug offenders making up the majority of recidivists. Beyond drug courts, the OJP’s grant programs provide services to a variety of high-risk offenders in the hopes of reducing the number of repeat offenses.
Attorney General Eric Holder touted the importance of prisoner reentry programs such as drug courts earlier this month — announcing an interagency working group to focus exclusively on reentry issues like housing, job training and specialty courts.
However, the DOJ’s Inspector General’s office released a report Wednesday that criticized the OJP for not effectively tracking how grantees spend funding. In an audit of 10 grant prisoner reentry programs worth about $17.9 million from January 2005 to November 2009, the office found little documentation that the office followed up after awarding the grants.
It also found that OJP had not established an effective system to gauge whether offender reentry programs were meeting their goals, and it pressed the office to improve management and oversight.
Burch sought to differentiate his office’s new programs — the Second Chance Act reentry programs — from the older programs that appeared in the audit.
“It’s important to know that both of the programs that the IG looked at are programs that were in the past,” Burch said in an interview after the hearing. “They were in the last administration, and they are completed.”
He said the IG’s report on the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative and prisoner reentry initiative were already under review by his office. With the Second Chance Act reentry programs, Burch said things will be different.
“Many of those things they pointed out are things we knew about and had already taken measures to address,” he said.
Before beginning the Second Chance program, Burch said his office brought in a team of outside evaluators, and based on their suggestions, they implemented “rigorous monitoring efforts and financial control.”
“The difference in the way we are involved in these programs … is night-and-day,” he added. “When we met with the IG a number of times on this report, our conversations were very much along the lines of ‘We hear you with that. We’re doing things very differently with Second Chance.’”
[...] to this article from Main Justice, James Burch II stated these courts offer effective and sustainable alternative approaches to the [...]
[...] Director James Burch II of the Bureau of Justice Assistance told House members in July that the programs that were scrutinized by the Inspector General are finished. [...]